


The Potency of a Monster’s Hope in the Dark of War

by AntagonizedPenguin



Series: How Best to Use a Sword [20]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, History, Inevitability, It might be more obvious how this one relates to the main timeline than some of the others, Running
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 04:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12124140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntagonizedPenguin/pseuds/AntagonizedPenguin
Summary: In a war between gods and monsters, is it really possible that it's the humans who are right?





	The Potency of a Monster’s Hope in the Dark of War

**Author's Note:**

> Another one-off I've had planned for a long time but never got around to writing. Careful readers of the main story know how this one ends. :)

The humans were right.

Charlene realized that now, that the humans—how fast she’d been to start thinking of them as a separate group from her, from what she was—they were right about him. They were right about Nathen. 

She’d never met Nathen Jerrel De’Kerken. Only a few of them ever had, but he’d been dead for a hundred and thirty years now. Memory of him was fading even as the cause he’d fought for lived on. The only ones who really remembered him now were the gods they were at war with, and some of Charlene’s older allies, Klaus and a few of the others. 

To those of them like Charlene who had been born after Thunderfall, into a world already torn apart and tearing further, Nathen was just a story. A cautionary tale, a horror story. Until recently, when a different story had been told, one of someone who’d wanted to protect the world, to right what was wrong and had gone about doing it no matter the consequences. A story of hope rather than fear. 

Charlene’s chest ached and her legs burned, her lungs screaming at her as she kept running, through the sparse woods and over rocky ground. She’d been running since she’d left the Hill of Loneliness, miles and miles behind her now. She had to be nearing the southern end of the new mountain range now. She was probably far enough away to rest, but still she ran. 

She didn’t know where the stories had come from, that Nathen wasn’t dead, that he would come back and protect everyone someday. And at first she hadn’t believed then, because there were demonstrably stupid—people didn’t come back from the dead. Death was permanent, Charlene had learned that early enough when her baby sister had been butchered by the underlings of some god to make an example of what happened to the disobedient. 

The intended lesson had been that if everyone didn’t do as they were ordered and fight for their god, they could expect to be treated the same. All Charlene had learned was that the gods were monsters and any good person needed to take up arms against them. 

Death was permanent, and Charlene had learned that early on. She hadn’t paid the stupid stories about Nathen any mind. 

Until she’d realized that Klaus and the others were taking it seriously. Why should they scoff on the one hand, call it a vapid folk belief and silly human dreaming, but also have meetings to discuss strategies for if it did happen? Why if it was a pointless thing to believe did Klaus want it stamped out?

Why, if Nathen wasn’t coming back, had Charlene been sent to retrieve his sword from the citadel on the Hill of Loneliness, where it had been kept as a trophy?

She clutched the sword to her chest as she ran, fleeing the gods whose citadel she’d robbed, fleeing whatever they’d sent after her to retrieve their property. But the sword, Nathen’s sword, it wasn’t theirs. It belonged to Nathen Jerrel De’Kerken, and he was going to need it when he came back. 

Klaus and the others, their little group of monsters, they were standing up for the humans, supposedly. Supposedly. But Charlene felt more and more like that wasn’t true, like they were standing up for themselves. Klaus always seemed like he wasn’t saying something, and he wouldn’t tell anyone where he’d gained the power to make them what he’d made them into. They were fighting the gods, true enough. But there was something else, something more there that Charlene wasn’t seeing. And she couldn’t trust them to protect people like her little sister. She couldn’t trust them to protect humans. 

Could she trust Nathen? Could Charlene trust a dead psychopath who she’d never met over than the people she knew and worked with, who’d given her the power to do what she needed to do?

What were they going to do with Nathen’s sword if she brought it to them?

Charlene couldn’t run anymore. She slowed, leaning against a tree, putting her hand up to brace herself. 

She looked at that hand, the long fingers, the illusion she wore to appear human having disappeared as she directed her energy into staying on her feet. Now she couldn’t even do that. Her fingers were too long, even after sixty years of looking at them they were too long, the third joint too alien. Some of the younger ones, having been through a process better practiced than what Charlene had endured, had physical transformations less obvious. But some had more. Whatever it was that Klaus had learned how to do to them, whatever power he’d tapped into to make his little army of rebels, it wasn’t compatible with a human body and left them with horns, with tails and fingers with extra joints, with wings and fangs and claws. 

And it hurt, the process hurt so badly, Charlene could still remember the feeling of her entire body being dismembered, rent into a thousand pieces and sewn back together. The power was worth it, it really was. But she still had nightmares about what it had taken to get it. Not everyone survived the process. 

So she’d come out of it with horns and a tail. It was worth it to be able to fight on even footing with the people who had killed her family. With the people, with the monsters, who had killed so many humans. If it took becoming a monster to fight the monsters, then Charlene had been willing to do it and still was.

She’d barely caught her breath when Charlene felt it. A power, approaching from the west, from the Hill of Loneliness. She’d been wrong to stop, they were still looking for her. 

She started moving again, staggering now. Stopping had made her realize how tired she really was, how much her body suddenly seemed to be made of rock. Charlene didn’t think she could run any longer.

The power was growing closer, and when it found Charlene, it was going to kill her. 

Or not. A second power appeared as well from the south, approaching her as well. That one Charlene recognized. One of the others, one of them. Klaus’s second in command, if she wasn’t mistaken. 

Charlene could get the sword to them, get home safely. Not be killed here. 

And whatever they were going to do to stop Nathen from coming back would go forward, would work. 

Her indecision was only momentary, and as she started moving north, gasping for breath as she did, Charlene realized that she’d made the decision ages ago. She wasn’t going to let the monsters have the sword—either of the monsters. 

She broke through the tree line, saw cliffs, rocks. The southern edge of the mountains. If she could duck around them, get lost in ravines and valleys, she could flee. Her power was so small, tired, compared to the two bigger ones that were approaching. Once they started fighting—and they would—they wouldn’t be able to find her. 

There, a cave. Charlene’s eyes alighted on it and she changed her course, heading there. All she had to do was hide in there and wait out the battle that was about to come. Maybe they would assume she’d died. 

Inside was damp and cold, and Charlene took a deep breath, pulling on some of her last reserves of magic, to move some rocks in front of the entrance so it wouldn’t be too obvious. Falling to the ground in her exhaustion, she moved her hands in intricate patterns as she wove complex wards around the cave, the best she knew how to make. The kind that would prevent anything from coming in, without drawing too much attention. 

A dedicated power could break them, but they would have to know where to look first. 

With that done, Charlene couldn’t do more than crawl into the cave, gasping for breath. It was damp in here, wet. There would be a pool of water or something creating all that condensation, surely. 

There, near the back wall, a little spring, a trickle of water running down the stone. Charlene opened her pack, tossing her things out onto the floor, some money, a book, spare clothes. Her waterskin was empty, and she set it to the wall, gathering the water rather than trying to lick it from the stone. She was thirsty but not dying. 

As she sat there filling the skin, she felt the collision of magic outside the cave, beyond her wards. They were fighting, another battle in the endless string of battles that held the world together. The cave rocked once or twice, dust falling from the ceiling. 

Charlene ignored it all, taking the skin to her lips and sucking back mouthfuls of water. It had a bit of a metallic tint to it. There were probably mines in the mountains here. Once she wasn’t thirsty anymore, she stood, still holding the sword. There were holes and crevasses in the walls of the cave, runnels made by water, most likely. Into one of the larger cracks she stuck the sword, far back, wedging it in a little bit. That way if they found her, they wouldn’t find the sword, at least. She’d claim to have dropped it in her flight. 

Nobody but Nathen Jerrel De’Kerken was going to put their hands on his sword. 

The battle raged on outside her cave. Charlene sat down near the spring of water and started to fill up her skin again for when she would need it later. 

And Charlene waited. For the battle to end. For Nathen to come back. For a long time. For as long as it took. She waited.


End file.
